An Interview with Comic Book Writer Martin Pasko: Celebrating Superman
This is the first of a two part interview. The first part will concern Superman, a character for whom Martin Pasko wrote from 1974-1982 in the pages of Action Comics, Superman, and Superman Family.
Martin Pasko currently owns and operates Martin Pasko Creative Development. MPCD is a content supplier and consultancy specializing in developing branded entertainment properties such as comics and toy lines for transmedia storytelling applications, as well as more traditional TV, film, web content, print media, and consumer product licensing. A veteran writer, story-editor and producer in a diverse array of media, including live-action and animated television, Pasko has helped translate many comics properties to TV, including “Superman,” “The Tick,” and “Cadillacs & Dinosaurs,” and has story edited and written for such series as “My Little Pony,” “G.I. Joe,” and “Batman: The Animated Series,” for which he won a Daytime Emmy® Award. He is also a co-writer of the animated feature “Batman: Mask of The Phantasm.” Pasko has worked for many comics publishers, but is best known for his work with DC, having written “Superman” in many media, including children’s books and webisodes as well as comics, and co-created the Bronze Age retconning of “Dr. Fate” that is the basis of the character’s current, long-lived incarnation. A former DC Comics Group Editor, he is the author of several books including The DC Vault and co-author of The Superman Encyclopedia (with Robert Greenberger).
NerdSpan: Which of your Superman stories has inspired the most questions from fans?
Martin Pasko: Well, if by questions you mean things like, “What the hell were you thinking?” it would probably be “The Master Mesmerizer of Metropolis,” the one I’m most embarrassed by — that story that posited that people see something more than just Superman with glasses when they look at Clark Kent, that he is constantly and subliminally using his “super hypnosis” power to will others to see Clark as a much less handsome and frailer-looking guy. As I’ve said elsewhere, that wasn’t my idea and I was kind of commanded to develop that concept by the editor. Today I’d be within my rights as the regular writer of record to say, “Thanks, but no, thanks.” But back when I was doing SUPERMAN, the prevailing notion of professionalism was that a writer complies dutifully with editorial fiat. And that I did, to my everlasting regret.
From Superman 330 by Martin Pasko and Curt Swan.
NS: You’ve written for both Superman & Wonder Woman. What do you think of their current relationship status? Is it in character?
MP: “Is it in character?” isn’t a question I would ask as a reader. I don’t come to retcons with a preconceived notion of how the characters should be played. I can take a retcon or leave it, but I don’t think about whether it’s “right” or “wrong.” All I think about as a passive reader is whether I personally find it interesting and, if asked to make a critical evaluation, all that would matter to me is whether the idea of Superman and Wonder Woman being lovers makes psychological sense in the context of how they’re interpreted in their own titles. But, at this point in the unfolding of “The New 52,” I’m not sure I could even form an opinion on that yet.
Maybe the thinking that underlies your question has something to do with this idea of “iconic” characters, but, frankly, that term has been so overused and applied to such wildly disparate subjects that it’s lost its meaning to me. In any event, the problem I have with that kind of thinking is that it presupposes that there is one definitive, immutable characterization for, in this case, Superman or Wonder Woman, that the current material can and should be judged against, and I just don’t think that way. I can only tell you about the choices I’d want to be allowed to make if I were handling the characters now.
For me, a lot of what’s interesting about Superman are his unique challenges in relating to ordinary human beings, which is why, if I were tasked with coming up with a love interest for him other than Lois, it would never occur to me to suggest Wonder Woman, who is as inhuman, so to speak, as he is.
Cover art to Young Romance 1 by Kenneth Rocafort.
I suppose it makes sense on a superficial level that a character as powerful as Superman might be more comfortable with a super-powered female than with Lois, but whether that’s a more satisfying relationship (satisfying to both Superman and the reader) than the traditional one with Lois really depends on how much this version of Superman longs to be human, longs to fit in with his adopted world, or whether he wants a lover who can relate more to the feeling of being superhuman among humans — the idea being that they bond on the level of feeling alienated from the word around them. The Lois I wrote provided Superman’s touchstone with humanity. She was the means by which writers could dramatize the emotional vulnerability in Superman — he was able to show her that side of himself, knowing she wouldn’t judge him negatively for it — and that was always what seemed to me to be her main function in the series. Whether the relationship with Diana “works,” in terms of being dramatically satisfying, depends largely on how Superman is being redeveloped, and I don’t yet have a clear sense of that.
Art by Marcio Abreu. Used with permission of the artist from www.marcioabreuart.blogspot.com
When I was writing SUPERMAN, I always thought that he was neither Superman nor Clark Kent — he was Kal-El of Krypton and both Clark and Superman were aliases, assumed identities. The “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” take — which was essentially what Byrne’s retcon seemed designed, in part, to facilitate — seemed to posit that he was Clark first, an unusual human but a human nonetheless, and Superman second. That version of the character would probably not have felt an attraction to Diana of Themyscira, whereas Kal-El of Krypton might have.
But at the time I was writing SUPERMAN, the DC heroes were more sequestered. It would never have seemed “right” to the editors to make Wonder Woman a semi-regular in SUPERMAN — she needed to stay in her own title except for occasional guest shots elsewhere — so it never came up. Also, I was writing WONDER WOMAN around the same time, and in that continuity she had her hands full dealing with her own problems; the last thing she’d have had time for was an involvement with another super hero.
All-New Collectors’ Edition C-54 by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. This is what Superman / Wonder Woman meant in the seventies.
NS: Clark’s first romantic interest was Lana Lang. Before she came to prominence in the Superboy TV show and Smallville, Lana Lang’s most memorable tenure as a cast member in the comic books was in Bronze Age comics. The Bronze Age found the heart of Lana Lang–instead of trying to prove who the Man of Steel was, which was her single note in the Silver Age, the new version of Lana was trying to prove herself to The Man of Steel, as well as prove herself to herself with her own professional ambitions. What did you have to do with her evolution as a character?
MP: No version of Lana that contemporary readers might be familiar with has anything to do with what I developed. Once they made the decision that Superman had never been Superboy, both the teenage and adult Lana had to be drastically changed. But in “the Bronze Age” (ick), it was my idea to reintroduce the adult Lana to the SUPERMAN continuity, from which she’d been absent since editor Julie Schwartz took over the titles. And since neither Cary Bates nor Elliot Maggin seemed particularly interested in the character, I was left to play her pretty much as I wanted, so I guess I had a great deal to do with the adult Lana of at least that period. (To the extent that her younger self was still appearing in SUPERBOY, she was unchanged, and, when I did a Superboy story or two, I played her pretty much the same way Cary Bates and the other writers were treating her.)
In SUPERMAN, I tried to give her a personality as far removed from Lois’s as I could. I was told that it had been established somewhere (maybe in Murray Boltinoff’s version of SUPERMAN FAMILY, but I never found the specific reference) that she had gone to Europe, so I gave her all these faux-European affectations, thinking it would be interesting to have her mask her insecurities about being around both Lois and Superman again by playing the sophisticate and treating Lois condescendingly. The irony I was building toward was that the very makeover she was trying to give herself in the hope that it would make her more appealing to Superman was the very thing that alienated him. Today, of course, no good writer would go anywhere near the trope of Lois and Lana’s rivalry for Superman’s affections, and they were wise to lose it in the ‘80s retcon, I think. I have no idea where the character is in the continuity at the moment, if anywhere at all, but I’d be mildly curious to see how she’s treated if she does pop up, or already has but I haven’t noticed.
From Superman 332 by Martin Pasko and Curt Swan.
NS: Of the many Superman stories you’ve written, do you have any favorites? Ones that never get brought up by fans or interviewers?
MP: Not many that I haven’t already been asked about, or explained the genesis of. The story of the alien space pirate who was being kept alive in a joyless existence by the telekinetic animals who were dependent on her, and who begged for death (SUPERMAN #318) is a favorite because it stood on its head the idea of Superman not only refusing to kill but making the preservation of life his highest priority. It posited a situation in which allowing someone to die was the more humane and heroic choice — it was, in essence, a euthanasia story — and I was very pleased with how it turned out.
Superman 318.
The Master Jailer two-parter (Superman 331 & 332, K.H.) was another favorite, because I thought the backstory I came up with for the villain — the obsession with locks and prisons and escape artistry coming out of his having escaped from the prison of his own body, by remaking his fat and clumsy self into a more physically fit and powerful guy — was kind of interesting because it was more character- than gimmick-based and tied directly into Superman’s personal life by virtue of his resentment of Lana’s attraction to Superman. I was also satisfied with it because it gave me the chance to do a story that brought Lana front and center without Lois having to be a story element.
Superman 331.
Then there was this 8-pager I did in an issue of WORLD’S FINEST in which there wasn’t a single moment of violence — and the first appearance of The Prankster since sometime in the 1950s, I think. It was also an experiment — an attempt to see if a self-contained 8-pager with the kind of twisty, “What’s going on here?” kind of plot that Mort Weisinger might’ve approved could be done in the somewhat more sophisticated storytelling style that was the norm at that time, in that the writing was aimed at a slightly older readership than Weisinger’s ‘60s-era, three-stories-per-issue tales, and comics were structured much differently by then.
NS: Most of Superman’s gallery of villains are inspired by envy, jealousy, or mischief directed toward the Man of Steel. Lex Luthor, The Prankster, Toyman, Mr. Mxyzptlk, even General Zod. Their greatest ambition is not to be great criminals, but to oppose, plague, or otherwise annoy Superman. But the villains you created — like Atomic Skull, Master Jailer, or Kobra — were decidedly darker, more introspective characters with cinematic motivations. Were you just trying to create worthy adversaries?
MP: Well, yes, worthy adversaries — in terms of physical power to match Superman’s in action — was the primary goal.
I deliberately stayed away from Luthor and Brainiac because they were being well represented — if not overexposed — elsewhere, and I didn’t much care for how they were being handled, in any event. I never quite understood, for example, why they thought tricking Luthor up in purple and green Spandex and rocket-thrusters and super-gauntlets was a good idea. Cary’s Terra-Man was another villain whose appeal I didn’t quite understand and couldn’t figure out what to do with.
As for the rest, I either brought back villains with great potential that had been ignored, like Metallo (my first story with him was only the character’s second appearance, after almost 20 years), or had to find ways to beef up the ones in use. The only villain in the Rogues Gallery I inherited who was designed to facilitate physical action — who wasn’t a survivor of Krypton with powers equal to Superman’s — was The Parasite. Or was I the first post-Weisinger guy to use him? I don’t remember. Of course, The Parasite used Superman’s own power against him, so the battles played pretty much the same as those with Phantom Zone escapees. The way he was played in the ‘60s was that he drained Superman’s life force and got super-strength, but I didn’t remember him stealing Superman’s powers per se, so I created a rationale for that and did stuff like having him flying around and fighting Superman with heat vision. I was happy to use the character, but he was kind of limited given that I couldn’t totally reinvent him. That was my main frustration with most of the Superman villains: I never had the freedom of completely reimagining them, only extrapolating from existing mythology in an effort to make them “bigger.” Which was why, for example, The Toyman became a killer and the toys he used were bigger and more deadly, but he was still a toy designer gone bad named Winslow Schott. (KH–you can find Martin Pasko’s Toyman / Bizarro story in Superman 305 and 306 on comiXology.)
Without the freedom to, say, eliminate everything but the character name, the way Byrne and the talent that followed him were able to do with most of the villains, I’m not sure how I could have made them more personally connected to Superman, and that would have been the goal. I mean, contrary to what you seem to be suggesting, I wouldn’t argue that there’s anything necessarily wrong with having villains who have a personal issue with Superman, villains for whom every battle with him is a grudge match. I don’t know what kind of motivation “wanting to be a great criminal” is. “I hate him because he’s put me in prison a lot — he’s gotten in my way” is a little more relatable than “I want to kill Superman because I want to rule the world.” The trouble with the grudge match is that it’s repetitive and gets old very fast. Better that there be more of a personal connection. Even Phantom Zone escapees who wanted to avenge themselves against Jor-El by killing his son gave the writer more to play with than, say, Mr. Mxyzptlk’s desire to commit weird, random magical vandalism. That’s why I was satisfied with the Master Jailer concept: his animosity to Superman was very personal, rather than cerebral or ideological.
I did try to make the villains “darker,” as you say, in the sense that wherever I could I tried to make them desperate. Often, their very lives depended upon defeating Superman, as was the case with The Atomic Skull and my revival of Metallo.
Cover to Superman 323, which featured the first appearance of the Atomic Skull.
NS: The post-Crisis Superman had a much leaner mythology, with elements like Superboy, Supergirl, and the more sharply dichotomized Clark / Superman relationship removed. Since then, much of this–except for the meek Clark–has been gradually reintroduced to the character, until, in the New 52, we have two different Supermans: Grant Morrison’s, in Action, in which we see an attempt to cram as much Supermyth as possible into his seventeen issues; and the other, in the Superman title, which has more of a post-Crisis feel, especially since George Perez left the book. Have you been following along with these stories? What do you think of New 52 Superman?
MP: Well, I don’t want to sound snarky, but I’d have to say that I’ve been reading them, but I haven’t exactly been following them. Largely because of the difference in tone and style between SUPERMAN and ACTION that you cite, I’m not sure what the point is of what I’ve been reading. By that I mean, I can’t see where it’s going, or sense the rationale behind the creative choices being made.
Cover to Action Comics 1 by Rags Morales.
Changes in a character’s backstory and supporting cast are often made for extra-dramatic reasons (i.e., marketing, branding, or legal reasons). That seems to be the case with the current changes in Superman, but I have no real insight into that. For a long time, I was convinced that the Superman retcon — the “leading edge” of which was the forthcoming film — was being defined largely by changes Warner Bros. felt they needed to make in the property to reduce the number of elements that were directly traceable to Siegel and Shuster’s original conception, so as to reduce the percentage of further revenue they’d have to pay the Siegel and Shuster estates. But the protracted legal wrangling has become so tortuous and byzantine, while Man of Steel has gone ahead apparently unaffected, that it’s impossible for anyone not directly involved to draw conclusions with any reasonable confidence that they know what they’re talking about.
Leaving Legal considerations aside: There are other kinds of extra-dramatic concerns, such as a concerted effort to appeal to a different audience, a different target demo. In those situations, too, the writers have to make sure that the tweaks to the protagonist’s characterization, ongoing relationships, backstory, etc., not only add up and make sense, but also serve the creative goals as defined by those extra-dramatic concerns. If it “works,” I think a seasoned Creative with a mastery of craft can divine that from the end product.
For example, when John Byrne and company made the decision to allow Ma and Pa Kent to survive into Clark’s adulthood, having also removed the backstory of his having been Superboy, that changed Superman fundamentally and purposefully — it was an obvious effort to change the nature of the character’s appeal and a way of trying to get away from the bland, vanilla, Super Boy Scout curse. He became younger, less mature, less of an authority figure — more relatable to the desired core audience as a peer or older brother, instead of the father-figure he had been. Having never been Superboy, he was less experienced at using his powers publicly, in a formal super hero persona, and so he was also made more youthful by the fact that the Kents were available to give him parental advice — career guidance. All of which I think was the intent; the creative goal. And as a reader who thinks like a writer, I could interpret, or at least speculate on, that creative goal on the basis of the finished product.
I can’t do that with the “New 52” stuff I’ve read so far. The current treatment of Superman seems to be cherry-picking, from among all past continuities, what DC considers the best Superman ideas, recombining them in new ways. But I can’t perceive an underlying logic, or even a sensibility, on which those decisions are based. They may be part of some grand design we can’t know about, or purely someone’s idiosyncratic personal taste. I don’t see any patterns in the thinking. That may be because the people writing it don’t themselves have a clear idea of why the changes have been made. The stuff plays as if the creative direction is being dictated by someone else, and, of course, there is every good reason to suspect that’s the case. I also have this sense that the books are “vamping” — marking time, as if they’re waiting to see if Man Of Steel tanks or not before they commit to anything.
Cover to Superman Annual 1 by Kenneth Rocafort.
NS: This is a big year for Superman, as in June of this year Superman will have been in publication for 75 years. Perhaps timed with the 75th anniversary, there is a new Superman movie coming to movie theaters in June. You’ve been involved with some of DC’s TV projects, such as Batman TAS and Smallville. As an insider in the comics and entertainment business, what do you think we can expect from Man of Steel?
MP: Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself an “insider in the comics and entertainment business” now. So all I can do in answering your question is interpret the signals we’re getting from the trailers and leaks that precede the release of the film — reading tea leaves — and I could be totally off-base.
But I did put in several years at DC as the initial creative liaison with all the Warner Brothers divisions adapting DC content to film, TV, etc.. So I might have an insight or perspective that someone else as removed from the process as I am now wouldn’t: an understanding of the WB culture, which doesn’t seem to have changed all that much since I left because Jeff Robinov is still running the studio.
I get the impression that the studio is deeply ambivalent about the Superman property and doesn’t know quite what to do with it. If I’m correct in that assessment, some of that might have something to do with the fact and so much legal wrangling was going on concurrently with production; I don’t know. But I do understand why some fans whose posts I’ve read in blogs and discussion forums look at what little has been released so far and conclude that the studio is trying to play Superman “dark” — like the Batman franchise — because that’s the only approach to super heroes they understand or have any confidence in, especially after being disappointed by the “brighter” GREEN LANTERN, which is as science fictional — as opposed to “reality-based” — a property as Superman. And if that’s true, the new film could be a disaster — “critically” if not commercially — because dark and grim is not most of the public’s perception of Superman. Even the current “New 52” books aren’t what I’d call dark. Meanwhile, the trailer suggests that the film is not just tonally but literally dark: all the footage seems murky and underlighted.
One sheet poster for Man of Steel.
So I think the real gamble is in how much the film challenges certain preconceived notions about the character and whether doing so is a plus or a negative.
It seems that WB feels it has to make a Superman film lest the studio be accused of not doing all it can to retain rights to the property and appropriately monetizing that asset, and Time-Warner shareholders will complain loudly — and damagingly to certain executives’ job security –if they don’t. But they don’t want to make a Superman film. After the disaster of the Bryan Singer picture, they know they have to reinvent Superman, but the question is whether that’s even possible. Is there a downside to putting out something that those who don’t follow the comics will react to by saying, “That’s not the Superman I know?” Hard to tell. I don’t envy the spot they’re in. All I can say beyond is that is this: the very fact that the word “Superman” isn’t in the film’s title says a lot about what kind of ambivalence Warners executives may be feeling, and it doesn’t necessarily bode well.
NS: Recently, you wrote two new Superman stories, the all-ages Superman story The Prankster of Prime Time in 2010, and the DC Retroactive: Superman–the 70s in 2011 for the mainstream comic collecting audience. Since the bulk of your superhero comics were written, mainstream superhero characters have followed indie comics into some very adult themes, so that all-ages superhero fiction is the exception rather than the rule. All-ages comic books tend to have short life spans whether or not they are associated with popular characters, for instance, Superman Adventures which ran 66 issues, and Superman Family Adventures which is being cancelled after only 12 issues with recent circulation figures around 8000 copies sold. Why are comics not connecting with younger audiences and how can superhero comics catch some of that Harry Potter magic and connect to younger readers?
MP: I’ve been asked a question like this many times. It’s always difficult to answer because I don’t think there’s a clear-cut consensus in the industry of what an “all-ages” comic is, or what it’s supposed to accomplish.
First, to see the question clearly, I think we have to understand that our society defines “adult content” very narrowly: it’s just about nudity, depictions of sex, and profanity. Not even violence, so much. But there are many other kinds of mature content — content that isn’t so much “inappropriate” for kids, per se, as irrelevant and inaccessible to them. A failure to grasp this — largely because most comics are written by people who self-identify as Geeks, who tend to have been more precocious as kids than the general population — a failure to grasp this distinction lies at the root of the problem.
This distinction is, I think, what a writer needs to see clearly in order to create a book with “layered” content, which mainstream comics do attempt and sometimes succeed at. By “layered,” I mean a book that can appeal on a very straightforward level to a younger reader, in terms of the basic plot, action, and so on, but which also has elements that an older audience can appreciate: a sophisticated theme; a moral dilemma for the protagonist — content in which an older reader will perceive subtleties and nuances that younger readers don’t, but on which the story is not dependent in order to make sense.
It’s most easily done by writers who are well versed in literary children’s fiction. Much of literary kid lit, particularly books that are intended as “read-alongs,” works that way: Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, for example, can be appreciated by kids for its simple story about Charlie touring the factory, without their necessarily being able to understand Roald Dahl’s social satire and commentary on overindulgent parenting. But there’s still a lower limit to the demos you’re reaching with such a work. By contrast, there isn’t going to be much that engages an adult in something that is accessible to a preschooler, which reduces itself to bright colors and interesting shapes, and no more of a narrative than you’ll find in an old Teletubbies episode. So “all-ages” doesn’t really mean “all.”
But you can’t really tell by looking at the Big Two’s comics that are marketed as “all ages” which ages they are intended for. If the intent of an all-ages comic is to reach out to a younger readership, starting at a Kindergarten or First Grade level, to get kids interested in the comics form, I’m not sure that’s even possible any more, and I’m fairly certain that what we call the all ages comic is not the right way to do it. You have to create a product that appeals only to kids, and to be sure of what age-level — what reading comprehension level — you’re aiming for. But mainstream comics publishers seem reluctant to do that. The talent’s heart, not to mention core competency, isn’t really in it, and the distribution system doesn’t know how to sell it. The Big Two seem to want to hedge their bets, to create something that isn’t written much more “simply” or directly than the way the “regular books” are written; just comics drawn in a cartoonier style, or what the artist imagines to be the current vogue in kids’ book illustration. And because the resulting comics are neither fish nor fowl, they end up appealing to so few readers that they can’t sustain themselves.
That’s true no matter the genre. When you’re talking specifically about super heroes, it gets even more challenging. Before 1980 or so, young kids used to read super hero comics even if they read nothing else because comics were the only place you could find super heroes. Since then, they’ve been readily available on TV, then movies and home video, and then in videogames. Against those media with sound and movement, static and silent comics can’t really compete as a “super hero delivery system.” The only thing comics have to offer is the different experience of reading, and engaging the reader with a more complex story than the other media promise — which, by definition, isn’t something that will “speak to” a First or Second Grader.
Today, for a kid to want to buy a comic, he has to be predisposed to comics by “indoctrination,” if you will — of if that sounds sinister to you, maybe a better word would be “invitation” or “outreach.” But just putting a comic book in front of kid with no inclination to read anything, just because it stars Superman or Spider-Man rendered in a “kid-friendly way,” isn’t going to do it. And if what the publishers want to do is produce comics kids will want to buy — as opposed to their being a “parent buy” — that, I think, may be a lost cause. Because producing the kind of comic that might do that is a lost art.
The youngest age at which kids read comics in the Golden and Silver Ages, was, according to the conventional wisdom back in that day, around 6 or 7. And it was believed that they didn’t really read the comics so much as follow the pictures. So, most of the comics of that time were purposefully created in such a way as to make that easy to do. That’s impossible today, because comics aren’t created with such a reader in mind; they’re structured and paced in a completely different way and, more importantly, too dependent on too sophisticated a comics “grammar.” They take for granted the reader’s knowledge of what different balloon shapes and styles represent, for example, or how a caption in quotes is a “voice-over” as opposed to third-person narration. And when creators who are accustomed to crafting comics for the fan readership base, which is steeped in that grammar, turn their hand to trying to create something for younger audiences, they just don’t know how to simplify and communicate effectively to average kids.
So, today, if a comic is intended for small children at all, it’s intended for very precocious small children, kids who’ve already been reading before having been introduced to comics. And those kinds of kids generally don’t want to be talked down to; they don’t want something that feels like it’s been dumbed down for less literate kids. If they’re going to read comics at all, what they really want is what their parents or older brothers or sisters are reading. So they don’t have any use for “all-ages comics,” either. I think you can see the evidence of this any weekend in the comic book shops, where you see Geek Dad or Geek Mom trying to expose their kid to the joys of reading comics, sharing their passion. Fewer of those adults gravitate to the “all ages comics” than to the “regular books,” where they check them out for objectionable content, and then, if they’ve assured themselves there’s nothing in the book that they have to worry about, they buy them for their kids and that’s what becomes the “read-along.”
One of the interesting things about the Stone Arch DC super hero series — which is what my Prankster book you referred to was a part of — is that in their marketing as well as in their content, those books were clearly not intended as a kid buy. They were aimed at parents and educators, and sold as a fun way to encourage kids to read prose — that is, kids who were too young for the Harry Potter books — and to help teach reading comprehension. At least the first round of books in the series (I haven’t been following the more recent ones) came with a series of questions at the end, a kind of quiz, testing what the reader had taken away from the story — like the sort of things you find in elementary school “workbooks” — as well as other educational tools, such as a glossary of what the editors thought might be unfamiliar terms, such as “invulnerable.”
Mainstream comics editors don’t think of kids’ comics in those terms, which is why you see most of the stuff that is more explicitly marketed for younger readers in glossy, tabloid size magazine formats produced by licensees to the Big Two rather than in titles produced by the comics publishers themselves, or at least by a separate editorial department from the one producing the “regular books.” I know that business well; I ran the department at DC that did that kind of product for six or seven years. In those kinds of special projects or magazines, as many pages are devoted to games and puzzles as to comics-format stories, if not more. And those things don’t sell very well, either, unless their commissioned in huge print runs by corporate clients as trade loaders or pack-ins, because the games are all too low-tech for a mass audience. There’s a direct analog there, too, to my theory of readers’ kids vs. non-readers’ kids: the only kind of kids who like the puzzle pages in those publications are kids whose parents do crossword puzzles every Sunday.
As for capturing the Harry Potter audience, I don’t think there’s a lot of crossover between the Y.A. fantasy readership — meaning not just Potter, but Hunger Games, Percy Jackson and The Olympians, all of it, maybe even including the Twilight franchise — and an interest in super heroes. Super heroes are seen as inherently more macho and violent and less romantic and teen-angsty, I think, and those dimensions are probably a bigger part of Y.A. fantasy’s appeal than the “imaginative” elements. If there were more of a crossover, I think you might’ve seen more of an audience for, say, something like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World a few years ago.
NS: What would you give The Man of Steel on his 75th birthday?
MP: A less ugly costume.